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From 30GoodMinutes.Org
Lydia interviewing the Rev. Wright in 1999. I cut out the sermon but you can find it on the web. It is before the interview.

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Jeremiah Wright, Jr.
“Let Me See Again”
Program #4309
First air date November 28, 1999

Biography
Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. is Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the largest United Church of Christ congregation in America. A native of Philadelphia, PA, Jeremiah studied at Howard University, the University of Chicago Divinity School and United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, earning degrees in English Literature, the History of Religions, and in Black Sacred Music. Dr. Wright is an expert on the Black religious experience and lectures widely on the topic. He contributes frequently to scholarly journals and publications and is a well-known speaker, conducting preaching services to packed audiences across the country. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.

Interview with Jeremiah Wright
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Dr. Wright, the cry for mercy, the plea by the man on the road to Jericho, in many respects, as you say, is our cry, our plea. Have you ever felt like that man?

Jeremiah Wright: Oh, yes, many times.

Talbot: When?

Wright: Well, at times you lose vision or you get frustrated like the prophet Elijah says, “It’s too much, take it away.” At times when you’re overwhelmed by things that take away from ministry and your attempts to do ministry. When one of our young minister’s mother just dies suddenly, you lose hope, you lose the faith. All of a sudden you find yourself feeling jaded. A young person comes up with an idea for ministry and you’ve been hurt or jaded so much that you can’t see like you used to be able to see. That’s in my own ministry, my own life. Those things have happened where someone will come with a new idea, and across the years, I find myself saying, “I don’t think that’s going to work.” Then I realize you don’t see with the vision that you once had. Lord, let me see again! Let me see as young people, with hope and with the kind of excitement about ministry and life.

Something like Columbine hits or you give up on race relations and you say, “God does not intend that to be this way.” Let me see again! Or this Smith guy starts killing Jews and Blacks, and you give up and say, “Wait a minute, God, I’m having trouble seeing like I once saw.” Dr. King’s beloved community was once something that we all hoped for and dreamed for and it seems so far away, so distant, like Langston Hughes saying, “My dream is gone. It was a long time ago.” And you realize the dream is still there.

Talbot: So the restoration of the hope, this restoration has happened for you.

Wright: Oh, yes.

Talbot: When you were a little boy growing up in Philadelphia, did you ever think that one day you would be at the University of Chicago Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary, with degrees in black sacred music and a host of wonderful, wonderful, things?

Wright: Not as a little boy. No.

Talbot: What was the call for ministry about for you?

Wright: As a teenager I thought I would have a vocation in the church. In fact, I thought I would be teaching seminary. I never thought I would be pastoring a church. In fact, I gave up on the so-called institutional church. Remember back in the sixties how we were against organized religion? I wanted to teach seminary but when I came to the University of Chicago Divinity School, which is a school designed to prepare persons to teach seminary, I was working part-time as an associate pastor of a church and saw the need, the real need and the real calling and claim upon my life in terms of ministry. This was where I was needed most because young people here, as I found out across the country, had no clue in terms of our story. Our story as African-Americans in terms of black sacred music, the spirituals, our rich history, our legacy, our heritage. They did not know our ministers. Most people did not know Harriet Tubman was a minister. They knew her as the Black Moses, but they did not know she was an African Methodist Episcopal Zion minister. So when I started talking to the kids and trying to educate the kids, it was like a still small voice inside saying, “Yes, but this is what you’re supposed to be doing all the time.”

Talbot: You have mentioned the words youth and kids numerous times in the last few minutes. I feel this must be a passion for you.

Wright: Oh, it is.

Talbot: Our most precious legacy is the future of our children. How do you get them into the tent and keep them there at Trinity United Church of Christ?

Wright: Well, we have twenty different youth ministries. It’s like a potpourri. All kids can’t sing, so we have a dance ministry. All kids can’t dance, there is a martial arts ministry. There’s a rights of passage ministry. There is a cultural institute where they learn their history as African-American children. There is a wide variety of ministries and each child can find something that he or she likes and enjoys. Then the Christian Education program, the teaching ministry of the church, and dedicated sponsors are what keep them in. They make them excited. It is something they come to own and something they come to look forward to and love themselves.

Talbot: You told me earlier you only have them for an hour or so a week. What are your greatest concerns about our young people?

Wright: The impact of negative fourth-estate realities in their lives: the media, hip-hop, gangster rap. Not all hip-hop. There is some very positive hip-hop and rap music, but gangster rap that denigrates women, that uses the kind of profanity that it uses. Those kinds of images that they spend so much time with on a day-to-day basis. My fear is that the message of the church will be muffled by it.

Talbot: And your hope?

Wright: My hope is that persons of faith will not give up hope or continue to work with young lives because if we touch one life, that one life will have many other lives that it will touch positively.

Talbot: And thank you, Jeremiah Wright, for doing that in your ministry and making a difference.